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Occupy General Strike Gets Early Start with Vandalism in San Francisco

Occupy movements around the country have called for a general strike today, May 1, but Occupy Oakland got an early start with a gathering yesterday evening in Dolores Park (which is in San Francisco, not Oakland.) (Update: Occupy Oakland has now scrubbed this event from its website, but a screenshot is below.) Here’s the event description:

The Strike Starts Early: San Francisco, once a stronghold of the dispossessed, has become a playground for the rich and a living hell for those of us who cant keep up or have no interest in capitalist relations. Homelessness, gentrification, racist police murders, the displacement of all that is queer, outrageous rent prices, our list is endless: it is time to reclaim our playground. We call upon all of our comrades from every corner of the Bay to descend upon Dolores Park for a ruckus street party to counter gentrification, capitalism, and the policing of our communities.

The “ruckus street party” didn’t end well. A group of protesters (variously described as anywhere from 50 to a few hundred in severaldifferentaccounts) marched from Dolores Park and started smashing windows and vandalizing cars in the Mission. Mission Local has the most extensive photos of the damage. We will know more in the morning, but it sounds like the police were not equipped to make any substantial number of arrests, and settled for dispersing the crowd.

Of course, the vast majority of Occupy protesters today are not going to be smashing any windows. The CBS report linked above extensively quotes a protester at Dolores Park who wasn’t there to break things and describes himself as “more than a little shaken.” But throughout the fall, vandalism and disorder were a feature of Occupy Oakland, and the peaceful protesters haven’t been able (or, in some cases, willing) to excise the vandals.

Oakland has been an outlier, and Occupy movements have generally been peaceful around the country. I’m hopeful that’s what we will see today in New York. But I’m also glad that the NYPD (which is far better staffed and more experienced at riot control than any other large city police department in the country) is preparing for trouble at a “Wildcat March” by anarchists set for 1 PM on the Lower East Side. Unlike SFPD, they are not likely to be caught off guard if mass disorder breaks out.

Update: After the vandalism, the event posting disappeared from Occupy Oakland’s website. A screenshot is below, reflecting that the event was posted on April 13 by Occupy Oakland’s events committee. This was still visible as of about 2:30 AM Eastern on May 1.

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So what a bunch of high end cars and expensive stores had their windows broken. It was an anti-gentrification event. Its not as though anyone was actually harmed, like when working class families are evicted via banks, a system that does not provide economic opportunity, and gentrification by SF’s arm-chair liberal…oh wait, no one cares when that happens.

These a”occupiers” only represent the scum, the parasites, the mooches, and public SERVANTS. This group represents everything wrong with America and the progressive riddled media treats them as if they were productive Americans.

If the Occupy movement had a lick of sense they would back and support Ron Paul and stop Obama’s clone Romney from getting the GOP nomination. Paul wants to stop the Wall Street fraud, the looting of the nation, stop crony capitalism, end corporatism and put an end to the military industrial complex. If the Occupy movement had brains they would occupy the ballot for Ron Paul.